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Wednesday, March 26, 2014

There
are some residents in Second Life™ that fill me with awe and admiration.
Arcadia Asylum is one of those people, and her legacy is sprinkled across the
grid in the plethora of builds that bear her name. Almost everything that she
has created is available free and full perm. Everyone is encouraged to rip
apart her masterpieces, change, improve, use parts, and admire. Arcadia left Second
Life™ some time ago, but has always been around with some name or other. She is
currently using the name Aley.

SLNewser’s
very own Gemma Cleanslate wrote twice about the Aley’s LEA build in April of 2012 (http://slnewserdesign.blogspot.com/2012/04/sea-of-aley.html ) and the Arcadia Asylum library in August of
2012 (http://slnewserdesign.blogspot.com/2012/08/arcadia-asylum-library.html
). She is compelling and cannot seem to
stop building. Her current build is the underground amusement park: Seaview,
that I have visited already several times. There is a lot to do there, and I
had to come back a few times to take it all in. I brought friends each time,
and they delighted in the offbeat humor of the constructions. At the urging of
my co-worker Gemma, I asked Aley if she would consent to an interview, and she
was more than gracious in agreeing. When I first teleported into Aley’s
underwater sandbox, she was playing with a build of a shrimp boat. A few
visitors came and went to pay regards during the interview. Aley was always
friendly and welcoming. She admitted that she could chatter on forever, and
that seemed to be what happened. The interview that follows is candid and
interesting. Was she pulling my leg…I am not sure? I will report what I
witnessed, as that is my responsibility as a reporter.

Join
me as we visit with a Second Life™ original:

Aley: This version (of the shrimp boat)
will be able to net scoop stuff and, there’s the nets deployed. I'm going to
sail around the Blake Sea and catch more mermaids.

SL Newser: It is common knowledge that
you are Arcadia ?

Aley: Yups. No need to look for the name; just follow the
thousands of full perm freebies.

SL
Newser: When did Arcadia come here?

Aley: Oh, Arcadia wasn’t my first account
[smile]. I first heard of SL in the late 90s when it was barely in Beta. Linden
Lab was getting some web news and real life news about them trying to start a
virtual world. Well, SL sounded like a huge dot com scam deluxe: “Pay exorbitant
rates to rent server space and call it land.
So, I followed SL before it was open to
the general public. I wasn’t about to “pay” to look at it. When SL opened free
accounts, I started one. I think my first account was named Bubbles. I goofed
around a while till that account was fried by glitches. You could totally loose
your account due to the bugs back then

Hmmm,
let’s see when I started the Arcadia account I was miffed and let some time
lapse. I started hanging out at the old Calleta Hobo Info Hub, and got into
open sourcing there.

Eventually,
I got sick of SL bugs and semi-quit for two months. When I tried to log back in
LL had deleted my whole inventory. The eventually restored it, but I was pissed
off, and stayed away as best I could. Back
then Linden Lab was scrubbing account data if they were dormant for a month.
Those were the wild old days in SL

The
whole grid would semi regularly be crashed offline by organized griefer
attacks.

Anyone
could fart and crash a whole sim offline for hours. Building stuff was tricky,
as a crash and rollback would even remove back up copies from your inventory. SL
had deadly bugs for a decade, but is way more stable now.

At
this point we were visited by Heather, a mermaid, and she hung around for a
while begging Aley to write a book of her life. Aley said it would never
happen. Instead, we started talking about gender in Second Life™.

Aley:
I use pretty gender neutral avatars. At my age I'm more asexual than anything

Heather: Asexual is good. Less time
fending off idiots.

Aley: It unclutters alot of life.

SLNewser:
Well, to change the subject…why do you offer so much for free?

Aley: I was retired all through the SL business,
and wanted nothing to do with clients
and stuff anymore. I have social security and a small pension, and I live like
a church mouse.

SLNewser:
How did you learn to build so well, Aley?

Aley: Oh, I was a CAD engineering
draftsperson for probably 20years, so I could fart out 3D models. My whole
family was into construction. My youngest sister is a professional welder. My dad
was an engineer at a huge contracting corportation that did the NASA contracts.

SL Newser: What was your favorite build
from those days?

Aley: I have no favorite builds, just
favorite projects. I live for big projects. The old slum city project was great
(http://spiritofarcadia.wordpress.com/a-slum-city-video/
). The sim owner eventualy turned the sim into a BDSM porno sim, so I deleted
it all. As if SL doesnt have enough of those already. I had anger management
issues back then, but I’m better medicated now. Better living through
psychiatric pharmacology. Current therapist hasn’t a clue what to do with me.
How to you write a treatment plan for a nutcase with no common craziness issues.

SL Newser: Awwwwww. I am not going to
write about this…

Aley: Please go ahead. I was never in
the closet about being a mental patient. I want it out and known that you can
do pretty well with your life with mental illnesses, if you get help and work
with it.

I
lost track, what was I rambling about?

SL Newser: What 3D software do you use?

Aley: Now? SL is my main 3D software
these days

SL Newser: So, you are not making mesh,
but using sculpts ?

Aley: I have fiddled with stuff like Maya,
etc., but LL punishes mesh. You get more vertices with sculpts then equivalent
mesh, and no size penalties. I use a dozen in world tools. Here’s the thing: I
worked for around 20 years hunched over auto CAD and, I’m NOT going back to
that hell. In SL I have direct interaction. I can model and play and chatter,
and best of all get direct feedback and help. This isn’t a job, it's a social hobby
to me. Little, if any of my work here is truly original. I pester everyone around
me for ideas and bits and pieces. As i don’t sell anything and give it all away
free, few have any qualms about playing.

SL Newser: So, tell me about your
current build, Seaview, the underwater amusement park. What was the inspiration
?

SL Newser: Yes, in fact, a friend of
mine asked me to ask you what happened to it ?

Aley: LL happened. That ended during M.
Linden’s mis-management. The idea behind it was to fully utilize a whole sim,
to build up to the sim ceiling. You see, people in general think in two
dimensions—out of sight; out of mind. I wanted to experiment with making something
that would force people to think up and down too. A few caught onto the idea.
There was a place called Starbase Alpha, or something that was based on the
concept after I worked it out.

SL Newser: Thanks.

Aley:
The Blake Deeps is 13 sims and owned by Hollywood Rentals. They own and manage
about 200 sims. Well, I started hanging out with the local pirate and sailing community
about three years ago, and rented that plot where Flotsam Town (another Blake Deeps
build by Aley) is located. I started guerilla decorating the seabeds in these sims,
meaning the owners dident know what i was up to.

Setting
up Flotsam in Blake Diego boosted its traffic a dozen fold, and the little sneak
stuff i did here boosted general boating traffic.

SL Newser: So, they kept you.

Aley: When Fanci passed away and her
properties were at risk the main owner of Hollywood Rentals bought them up, and
made four new open water sims named after Fanci. This time they asked me to
decorate the place on purpose [laughs].

The
owners wanted to expand from just pirate and age of sail theme to the mer community,
so we started a crazy experiment to see if you could combine rentals underwater
with events on top of the water, and
keep waterway clearance for sailing

Ninety
percent of these sims are homesteads with a quarter of the prim allotment. I
developed ways to develop homesteads by pirating LL owned ocean sims. There’s a
glitch, or was, where some rollouts
could reset auto return to zero. That made it extra fun (smile).

The average
prim counts for all the underwater stuff in each sim is around 200 prims. That
leaves 300prims for passing ships, boats, and planes, and the rest go to the
renters. Detailing 80% to 100% of a sim wide seabed in 200 prims is a major
challenge. The Blake Sea ocean homestead sims use around 1,000 to 2,000 prims
for their seabeds, and you have seen how barren they all look

Well,
Mark (Hollywood Rentals) wanted to bring in mermaids, and I was the only one
around who was developing homestead seabeds, so I volunteered to get in on this.
We dragged in the Safe Waters Foundation to help with community building

SeaView
Park is the result of being totally out of ideas for what more underwater stuff
to make. I tried to make an arctic underwater area but ran into all kinds of
problems, so I gave up. Ardo (Ardour Allen) said: “Make an amusement park.”

I was
desperate enough for anything, so I told Ardo to start building it. It ends up
as a nice Victorian era amusement part. I managed to drag that project out to
almost three months, and now it’s done.

I'm more
interested in lower prim impact then perfection

SL Newser: No one complains about your
work

Aley: Sure they do! I closed down at least
five marketplace shops. Some folks can't compete with freebies, especially when
there a fraction the prims. SL is a sort of social game. My game play is less
prims and free

At
this point we sort of drifted off into talking about other content creators and
how scultpts were superior to mesh. At times it seemed as if Aley was impatient
with me because I didn’t know enough about her body of work, which was true.

I
haven’t put in all that she told me, but probably more than I should have. Aley
is a remarkable person, at turns confident and proud, then a bit less so, as
when she told me that the builder of the Nemo sims’ textures made hers look
like crayon drawings.

There
is too, too much information out there, for me to give you a list of resources.
You can go and see recreations of actual builds at an Arcadia Asylum Museum.
Aley herself has a marketplace store full of full perm freebies, and the grid
abounds with lore and goodies all from this prolific woman.

Do spend some time learning what you can, and if
you see me in Fanci’s Deep at the Seaview Amusement park, say hello.

Friday, March 21, 2014

In the days before Second Life Newser, some of the staff worked at JamesT Juno and Dana Vanmoer's Second Life Newspaper. Among the other writers there was Covadonga Writer. Covadonga, known to friends as simply "Cova," had the distinction of writing for a real life newspaper in Argentina, and besides her journalistic articles did some Second Life-inspired fiction, notably her series in which her avatar has somehow made it to real life and taken an identity of it's own.

Unlike many former writers, Covadonga has made an effort to stay in contact with her former coworkers, as well as their new teammates, hosting staff parties at her beach "Cova's Cove." Recently, I met up with her there to talk about her time in Second Life since her days at SLN.

Covadonaga described herself as doing, "Very well, indeed. This is, truly, very much like real life. I've lost some friends that left SL, because they had a broken heart or just got bored, and I still miss them. But I have found new wonderful friends. It's very important to have good friends here to share the experience. Its sad otherwise. Plus, they tell me me and my partner are a strange kind of couple here.... we have been together for 7 years now."

Asking about her partner Ruffian Offcourse, Cova answered, "He is great, thanks. Couples don't tend to last that long here. Time seems to run faster than in real life." "Do they ask how you stay together?" "Oh yes, we get that a lot. People ask, but there's no formula. Like in real lfie. I think it has to do with learning to balance real life and SL properly. And having been lucky enough to find someone that is a good match."

Cova went on, "I also enjoy having learned a lot about building. Well, enough for what I want. Just for us, I don't mean to start a business or anything , but I have come a long way from when I wore the boxes. Hahahah!" She momentarily paused, "I also wish I had more spare time to do more stuff here. But for now I don't." She described her real life as "Hectic. My (real) life always has been like this. But at first this was so exciting, I used sleeping time to stay awake in SL. But now I can't so much. I get tired, hahaha! I was hoping to find time to dedicate to learning how to do machinima in here."

I brought up her Second Life fiction. Cova answered, "That was the Real Life Raider saga, hahaha! That came out quite well, if I may say so, yes? I would love to bring her back. Today she would be trying to discover what happened to the missing airplane (link)." I asked if there was any chance of that being written anytime soon. Cova answered, "Well, in the end, before managing to get back into SL, she met ME, in real life (grin). The ending was open so I could pick it up sometime. I think sometime I will."

I asked how her real-life journalism job was. She answered right now she was writing, "for a magazine, ... but freelance. Mostly I am teaching scriptwriting and writing for TV. That's why I am interested in making videos here. ... I almost got started, I met a couple of people who did very interesting stuff." One of the two was, "Stampshady Grimm. He was the best one, Very nice serious guy." Stampshady had done a number of short stories, "they even hosted a festival I attended."

Cova and I chatted for a while about both Second Life Newser, as well as certain events. She had not read up much on the new CEO, and asked about him. She did say she would write for the Newser if events in real life permitted.

Eventually, she had to take care of some matters in real life, "Please, tell the readers I said you are my favorite managing editor ever."

Covadonga Writer invited the Newser staff to hold another party at her beach. It may not be long before we have another there.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Netera Landar, a published writer under her real life name, Denise Flescher, was known for hosting weekly interviews and discussions at her "Netera's Coffee Lounge," and wrote for the Newser from 2011 to early 2012. So what has been going on with her since? I contacted her, and we agreed to meet up for a chat about what she's been doing since.

Netera and I met up at her home by the shore. She told me she had just gotten the place yesterday. Beforehand, she had been living with friends for a few months. Then for a month, she'd been living at a place for about 590L a month, "Just a hundred and ten more here."

Taking to Netera, she explained that after her time with the Newser she worked at Metaverse for a while, covering the music and art scenes. She then founded "Unforgetable" Magazine, and blog. There, she specialized in covering musicians and writers. Second Life, she explained, has lots of talent, and wanted to tell about the special people there. One interview she did, she needed five sittings to make sure she had a good tape. She was also a contributing writer for the Bowler Business Review. While writing for the BBR, she ran into graphic artist Eleanor Medier while at a Chicago 1920s sim to study roleplaying. When the BBR folded, Eleanor would go on to create the Sim Street Journal. Netera also worked with Eleanor at Music Matters magazine

Netera continues to be hard at work on her writing, "I work a lot with GottaWrite," she told of her own blog GottaWriteNetwork. There, she does a number of book and author reviews. As of now, she has a list of 45 books yet to review, "Six just for Penguin. I love reading cozy mysteries, women amateur sleuths." She told of liking Southern settings the best, "crazy and wonderful attitude." The blog does bring in a little ad money for a supplemental income, "I'm doing pretty well in content, authors waiting to be interviewed." She was currently going through a few books, including "Spinning in Her Grave."

Netera finished her third novel, "Deadly Reservations," which she describes as a "paranormal mystery." In the story, a detective and a psychic investigate a businessman controlling a small town. In truth, the businessman is actually a fallen angel, and the psychic eventually comes to discover she herself is more than human. The fiction is out in hardcover, a paperback edition for $14.95, and kindle version for $9.95. She did some research before writing certain scenes, including talking with a homicide investigator and someone with the FBI. After coming to Second Life, she ended up having to redo her work. Still, she had fun writing it. She originally wrote it four years ago, "Took me that long to publish it due to the stinking economy." She did both real life and virtual readings of segments of the story, taking it to Horrorfest at Park Ridge Illinois.

Netera described herself as "doing so many different things, it's crazy" at times. In real life she had recently taken up knitting, in addition to continue to write for a community newspaper in the Chicago suburbs since 1985. She has had to adapt to the changing economy, having to sell her old house and move to a smaller one. She has a daughter, now 22.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Grease Coakes has done what most of us only dream about---he’s
published multiple books. That feat
alone is challenging, but Grease has published in two categories, children’s
fiction and adult fiction. His books are
about the Griffin family, who are griffins, and the unusual world they inhabit.

Grease is a
long-time SL resident and news reporter for SL Newser. He’s been on a temporary leave of absence
while he’s been working on his book series and other RL projects. College in Cleveland, which is available
as a Kindle book, came out in late December.
The book is described on Amazon this way: “Glenda Baker, a 19 year old griffin woman,
goes to college as a freshman in a world where there's no humans. She's different as she's colored pink due to
her having a white griffin father and a red griffin mother. ... She
sometimes sees future events. Follow in
Glenda's paw prints and see a different world as she experiences college.“

I met up with Grease in the SL Newser conference
room a few weeks ago, and we talked about his latest book.

Grey Lupindo: So tell
me about this book. What has been the
response?

Grease Coakes: Well, my friend Amehana saw it as a journey
for the young Glenda Baker, who turns into Glenda Griffin later. .... It's
more like a prequel. Ginny Griffin [the character in his first book] was more like a springboard for the furry
alternate universe.

Grey Lupindo: Amazon
mentioned a "mature theme" or words to that effect. What does that involve?

Grease Coakes: I think stories aimed at adults have a wider
audience. I'm walking more in that
direction with Glenda as the main character now.

Grey Lupindo: Does she encounter sex or violence?

Grease Coakes: Yes,
she does. Sexual themes and bloodshed. I can say one character does get it for the
bad things he did and is doing. But the
main villain is forced into a “do or die” situation, so he's not a villain just
to be a villain. He actually has a
reason to do what he does.

Grey Lupindo: It must be really hard to promote an e-book.
You can't have a signing, for example. Or can you?

Grease Coakes: I know Jackson Arthur from Book Island. He knows how to promote through Twitter. And
my friend Amehana Ishtari can help as well. So I'm not alone. I can ask for help. In the mean time I can start on the next
chapter of the series. ^.^

Grey Lupindo: That's great. I'm so impressed that you've written so much.
I'm still one of those "drafts in the drawer" writers. What's
your secret for being able to juggle two lives AND write?

Grease Coakes: I
haven't been in Second Life much lately. But I do have a routine. I do my best to write even on days when I work
in RL. A few hours a day gets it done
over time.

Grey Lupindo: You
mentioned Book Island and Jackson Arthur. Has that been helpful to you as a
writer?

Grease Coakes: Yes, being around writers has been helpful.
The micro fiction meetings and his book biz were always fun to go to. It helped to talk ideas out and hear his ideas
and stories. And I shared my ideas and
plots. Being around like minded people
helped to push me to keep writing and not stop.

Grey Lupindo: I've
been involved in a couple of writers groups due to living in a couple of
different places. One was great. One, not so much.

Grease Coakes: Oh? What set apart the good writing group from the
not so great one?

Grey Lupindo: Motivation
is hard to keep going. The good group
focused much more on challenges...so many pages per day, per month, etc. They had mini-contests to help develop
writing skills.

Grease Coakes: That
sounds like a fun group to be in.

Grey Lupindo: Yes, I miss them. But tell me about your plans for your next
book.

Grease Coakes:
Basically the next one is summer in Cleveland.
It's about the characters having fun and having a summer job. Recurring characters come back, and it shows
the underground rave scene. In RL I went
to clubs. So I'll have fun writing
about electronic dance music before it became mainstream, like it is now.

Grey Lupindo: Neat. What's the conflict in that one? Or is that still a work in progress?

Grease Coakes: There will be a conflict or two.

Grey Lupindo: Will Glenda be the main character?

Grease Coakes: Yes.
She and her roommate get a summer job through a new character, Glenda's
mother. But I can say Glenda sometimes has
the strange curse or gift of seeing future events. Ginny isn't born yet.

Grey Lupindo: So
you're staying in the prequel mode?

Grease Coakes: Yes, eventually the prequels will lead up to
Ginny being born. Well, it's at the
start of the story so I’m not giving anything away. Glenda
gives birth to a perfect hybrid griffin which can fly and is strong. Most of the time griffins are only one or the
other. So at age 15 she legally lets
this married couple in Italy have her son for $150,000.

Grey Lupindo: Why
would she do that?

Grease Coakes: So her
college education is paid for and more.
The reverse could have happened -- she would have been stuck with a child and no
money.

Grey Lupindo: Because
she's so young?

Grease Coakes: Yes, it's either she gives up her child for
adoption or she faces poverty. Her
father is dead so only her mother supports her.

Grey Lupindo: That's a hard decision she has to make. Speaking from a mother's point of view.

Grease Coakes: I'll take your word for it. ^.^ But
I would imagine it would be hard.

Grey Lupindo: It's
impressive that you have developed a character that you can continue to grow.

Grease Coakes: Oh, thank you.

Grey Lupindo: When do you expect this one to be out?

Grease Coakes: Maybe in a few months if I write a few pages every day. But "College in Cleveland" just came
out so don't rush me.

Grease Coakes: *GIGGLES* :)~~~~

Grey Lupindo: LOL. I
can't finish anything, but I expect others to!

Grease Coakes: Haha

Grease Coakes: I have
the stories in my mind. Someone will die in the third book.

Grey Lupindo: Now
that’s a teaser our readers will love! Should
readers know anything about griffins before they read the book?

Grease Coakes: Hmmmm. Something to think about that I read from Wikipedia
is that the griffin's enemy is the horse.
Glenda's rival will be as smart as her and stronger. Glenda can’t just outthink her.

Grey Lupindo: Yes,
the rivals must be strong to make the character better.

Grease Coakes: Sure, if
nothing happened to the character -- if he
or she passed every challenge easily -- not many people would want to read
about him or her.